Lacking Luster
by scullyseviltwin
Summary: What does it feel like to die? what does Trinity feel like when she dies?


Title: Lacking Luster  
  
Author: ScullyAsTrinity AKA Barenaked Bostonian  
  
Feedback: To BNLXPhile12@aol.com, feel free to IM me.  
  
Spoilers: Just Reloaded.  
  
Summary: What do you see when you die? What do you feel?  
  
Thanks: To Kat on this one. And EY for the beta.  
  
Notes: Psssst, I KNOW I said instantaneous and slow and painful twice. I WROTE it that way, jeez.  
  
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Everyone is lead. Everyone falls. Falls heavy... when they die. Whether it be instantaneous or slow and painful, everyone is lead. Death is lead. A rather weighty catharsis of everything at once. A black hole of human life.  
  
All encompassing and yet devoid of everything.  
  
How can you blink slowly without closing your eyes?  
  
Everything dropped in death. Everything. Whether it was instantaneous or slow and painful, everything dropped. Your head hit the pillow with the same speed that it would if you were going seventy while DUI and somehow avoided the MAC truck and slammed into a brick wall instead. You hit the ground as fast as it takes a penny to drop from a thirty story building. You hit with the force of an atomic bomb and a feather. The pain, the time, the force... none of it registers in the split second that you know you're on the precipice between this world and... whatever is left.  
  
Eyelids have no color.  
  
Torn between caring and wondering if any of it really mattered, everyone eventually settles on their own choice, and looks back at their life through it. What a waste. What a wonder. What an enigma.  
  
It's in that split second that you want to know the meaning, why you were here, what your purpose was and if you fulfilled it. Questions spiraling into other questions spiraling for eternity. Your thoughts are the same as the next dead weight, the next casualty in an endless war.  
  
I thought of all of those things. All of them. And I came to some conclusions about myself. My life was a wonder, a beautiful puff of breath spread over an infinitely miniscule span of time. I didn't ask myself if I could have done more, I asked myself if I had had the time... what WOULD I have done? What would I have said? What should I have said?  
  
Even when dead your eyelids have the same non-color as they do in life.  
  
The coherent thoughts that I could think at the time were swept away by an errant breeze that smelled of dried leaves and mold. That is what death smelled like to me, that is what it reeked of. The one mantra that I could seem to disengage from the litany my mind was playing was one word. One single word: Sorry. Sorry I'm dead, sorry I didn't tell you, couldn't tell you, didn't know... sorry that I had a good life and wouldn't be around to see how yours turned out. Sorry I had to leave, sorry that it felt good to stop; sorry for the optimism, the pessimism, the dirty dishes and the broken monitor I never did get around to fixing.  
  
Sorry, sorry, sorry. Sorry that's my love leaking all over your fingers, hot and sticky and still carrying traces of dying life. The cells try to breathe. Did they latch onto your skin searching for sustenance? Did they find any? Could you feel them?  
  
It was all and it was nothing at that point. All of the thoughts that I had left were rushing to be expressed, but all that was expelled was a choking cough of bloody bile from deep within me.  
  
I'm sorry I was everything. Anything you needed. I'm sorry you didn't know that I knew.  
  
I thought them all, I thought them all at once but they refused to be spoken and drowned in the blood that was sliding down my throat.  
  
You love me? How much do you love me, I want to ask, I want to test you and I have no idea why. We've always been on level ground despite your destiny. Despite my own. Neither one of us has ever taken power, and I want to know for some sick, sadistic reason. Before I can ask, you tell me. You told me. But I was dead Neo. I knew I was dead and I could still hear you. Still. What a wonder.  
  
I couldn't see the non-blackness. Couldn't feel the void of darkness and light, even as it pulled at me.  
  
How?  
  
To damn much, too damn much to let me go. For the slightest moment in time, it soundest selfish, self-fulfilling. Then I breathed, after what seemed like an eternity of loss I took a breath. A breath that was mingled with the vestiges of the same breath you had just breathed out.  
  
Positively stunning, the color in your eyes after never having seen it before. The hue of your hair, the pallor of your skin. The glorious splendor of feeling your warm hand on my heart, determined. The brashness of the knowledge I had known before.  
  
And even as I began to cry, you were no different. No weaker, as your lips bruised mine, reminding me of the life force with which you sustain me everyday. We were no weaker.  
  
Together, we're a black hole. I am you and you are I. We go on forever. We must. Because... it is inevitable.  
  



End file.
